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Top tier Loot system tied exclusively to luck is a pain. Some relation to effort in the equation is always more motivating to non gamblers. Lots of good suggestions on many threads about how to balance out the luck versus grind factor and encourage play of some of the older instances.*

I've given up on getting better gear for the moment-the only place I feel/am squishy is the moors! I'd maybe notice my average stuff in tier 2 raids, but I'm not seeing many of those on Silverlode, so I wouldn't know. No one is even running Fornost or OD much anymore. So sick of doing sambrog thadur and glinghant but it's about the only option most days....

If some of the other great raids mentioned were scaled and the better of the older instances dropped better loot, or more frequent loot, than Sambrog, I'd be happy and I'd be a much better healer.

If the RNG didn't hate me I'd be happier still

*One of my fave madder ideas is to give bonus seals for the group members, the number of seals being related to the number of players in the group doing their first time through the instance. I guess this would be possible using deed log. Then, new to group/instance players are seen as a potential benefit, not just a liability.

Or a new mechanic where you give the raid leader some nice cosmetic or a Gold recipe after leading x completed raids.....

And the minstrel sang to them……”and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness.”

I am hoping that when the developers sit down to rework the loot system ( which is a total necessity )
they just read the OP's idea and do it.

1 gear item per instance , through token barter , with a reasonable ammount of runs required.
The rest of the loots , through RNG , but also with a barter option , although a pricy one.
But we do need a barter option for anything similar to our current gold items. The drop chance is pathetic and some of them are really desirable for your character's development.

+rep

PS. Checked this thread a while back , but i doubted devs would even consider to play with the loot system. I have just lost all faith in Turbine. For some crazy reason , i am hoping for a change now :-) But it won't happen until Helm's deep minimum i believe.No idea why balancing is so slow in this game. I will never accept it.

After over 1000 instances, many of them on T2 and T2C, I finally got my first gold.

On my 7th alt, who I only brought along to a BoD because I was too lazy to swap characters. It was his first run through an Erebor instance.

About an hour later, I saw a Warden get at least his 3rd gold drop (he was still in some purple and L75 gear and only had 2nd Age LIs, and was using a L50 carving, and had the type of strange virtues slotted that made me assume he picked the 6 highest numbers).

Suffice to say, I don't have a lot of confidence in the integrity of this game anymore.

All I remember hearing is that they're happy with the RNG code. Don't think we should take that to believe that they'll never tweak drop rates, or use a different system for loot. That said, when they were first changing Moria to a unified medallion system, many of the suggestions were similar to the OP. They didn't do it then, but who knows if they'd do it now.

In addition to adding different currency for each instance, there was also the popular suggestion of leaving the special drop (so someone would always get an actual piece instead of a portion of one) and add in barter coins *as well*. Because there's no way that getting that 40th boot barter gem so you can finally trade is anywhere near as satisfying as getting something immediately. For me, even winning a barter token is less exciting than winning the item I'd be trading it for, but that's obviously a necessity--I remember those Helegrod days when you could go weeks without a single drop for your class.

All I remember hearing is that they're happy with the RNG code. Don't think we should take that to believe that they'll never tweak drop rates, or use a different system for loot. That said, when they were first changing Moria to a unified medallion system, many of the suggestions were similar to the OP. They didn't do it then, but who knows if they'd do it now.

In addition to adding different currency for each instance, there was also the popular suggestion of leaving the special drop (so someone would always get an actual piece instead of a portion of one) and add in barter coins *as well*. Because there's no way that getting that 40th boot barter gem so you can finally trade is anywhere near as satisfying as getting something immediately. For me, even winning a barter token is less exciting than winning the item I'd be trading it for, but that's obviously a necessity--I remember those Helegrod days when you could go weeks without a single drop for your class.

Here's an additional quote from the February 21 twitter chat this year that say they are happy with it Frisco:

Q4 Peter_Pan – Do you have any plans to implement a system that allows master looter to be used in combination with remote looting? #LOTRO
A4 JWB - No plans as of now. We're pretty happy overall with how remote looting is working in instances. #LOTRO

I remember coming across a couple of similar statements in various threads, but can't find them atm. This and the complete lack of any comments in any threads suggesting that loot drop rates across various instance clusters (ie all the fornost/ITA threads) leaves me quite convinced that they are very happy with how things are and have no desire into looking into alternate means or reworking the loot system in any way at this point. Leaving me a very unhappy camper.

There have been many good suggestions on how to improve the loot system, my own preference would be something akin to what we had during OD, but Turbine seems uninterested in responding to, considering or otherwise acknowledging such concerns and suggestions.

How could Turbine not be happy with the loot system? People are actively posting about how they've farmed instances literally thousands of times to get a single gear piece that boosts their prowess by a fractional percent (if even that given that so many people don't even understand how their stats work). The new loot system is a resounding success for them. They've had you guys running old content over and over and over at the most minimal effort on their part.

I'm happy to say that for my part, I beat as much content as anyone else in the game, and didn't waste my time with Turbine's malignant hamster wheel. Don't support terrible game design (easy spamable content) by running it a billion times.

This and the complete lack of any comments in any threads suggesting that loot drop rates across various instance clusters (ie all the fornost/ITA threads) leaves me quite convinced that they are very happy with how things are and have no desire into looking into alternate means or reworking the loot system in any way at this point. Leaving me a very unhappy camper.

You're not alone. Currently, we still play very regularly the instances due to the social aspect (twice a week a mixture of 6 men with changing alts, once a week raids, sometimes 3 men in between). Now, we are already quite frustrated with the drop rates (many evenings without anything worthwhile - i.e. no teal, no gold - of course from CM and T2CM). Most of us are quite happy that vacation time is coming, so we'll have a break now for some weeks.

BUT: There's no way we will bear with the current system AND the same instances on 95 for another year. If nothing changes, we see forward to playing through the solo parts of future expansions and, then, leaving for another 11 months. Thanks LTA, this would not even cost us money, whereas currently, we spend on the average 100 $ or more per year (highest level preorder + additional TP)

The current loot system is just a waste of time for people with jobs and other obligations playing regularly, but far away from 40h per week grinders. I play for entertainment, not for permanent frustration.

Very interesting topic and thoughtful ideas. As much as I'd like to see more of a focus on quality in new development (quality defined by myself personally as striking visual design, diversity of mobs and mechanics, compelling and lore-appropriate storyline, and levels of difficulty that allow for new groupers, experienced raiders, and those in-between to each have access to that content--OD as my own choice for best meeting these criteria), people are also motivated to do group content because of the rewards, and the rewards aspect is failing to encourage people to group. Currently the system encourages farming of the easiest content, and those looking for either more challenge or greater diversity get stuck doing the same easy farm repeatedly because that's all that the people in glff want to do, or they get bored and leave the game, which is what my latest grouping kin just did. I'm still looking for folks willing to take on the ITA/OD t2c instances sadly--I'm dying to work through them but everyone says it's too much hassle for far too little reward. It isn't the reward I'm after, it's the thrill, but I also completely understand that people who spend hours of their lives on this would like to see something in return--totally reasonable expectation.

I like the ideas of adding locks back in (not as extreme as previous versions but also not allowing you to run Sambrog 50 times a night) and the concept of tweaking the loot system to encourage the use of many instances instead of the easiest one.

Locks are the best answer to the farming issue. They use 30 min locks in STO and it works well to get people doing other instances. Issue with multiple currencies for bartering like in SWG is that getting things becomes gated by people doing instance x. If no one likes instance x and has their gear there is no incentive to do it. For example in SWG this was an issue as only an experienced and lucky to not have it bug on you group could do Exar Kun. Kept me from getting my jewelry set before I had to stop playing. If you use locks that are at least 3x's longer than the time to run the instance people will run other content. Also add +5 seals for solo joining a random instance through group finder and that will really fix the issue.

Welleg , Kelleg, and Gelleg - Crickhollow
WARNING: leveling a warden may cause you to neglect your other characters.

So I haven't been checking the forums much so I just noticed this thread when it was bumped recently. I skimmed through it and would like to give my two cents.

I agree that this loot system is not very good but I don't think changing to a convoluted currency system with 30+ different types of medallions is the answer. I also don't think there are many people that farm the same instance constantly for only the seals. Because for a halfway competent group it is a lot faster to select every instance for the 50% bonus. It is my understanding that these instances are farmed for their speed so as to offer more chances at a gold item per unit time.

The simplest solution to that problem would be to significantly up the gold drop rate in instances that are more difficult. Although as others have suggested, upping the seal drops in the more difficult instances certainly wouldn't be a bad thing.

To be honest though. Right across the board. There needs to be higher drop rates. Thats why most of the people I know/me are getting burnt out on this game. Spending hours in instance content and having nothing meaningful to should for it is a bit of a downer. First ages definitely should drop more. It really sucks for people that didnt spend hours farming FAs when they still dropped in T1, the T2/T2C drop rate is pretty abysmal compared to what we had in OD/Orth. Even teals should drop more. Most of Fornost and the ITA cluster, especially OD (OD should totally drop first ages too) has some really sweet teals but I feel like that stuff doesn't get run much because the drop rate is butts.

Actually that pretty much sums up my whole feelings on this loot system. The drop rate is butts. Higher drop rates everywhere and I would be happy

I would love to see the OPs idea appropriated to work with gold items. So that you don't end up in a situation where you're hundreds or thousands of runs in and still missing that gold you want. I'd love some sort of assurance that if the RNG fairy doesn't smile on me after like 50 or so runs from a particular cluster, I could get its gold item.

I'd vote for the approach of the OP regarding the cluster coin requirements on top of marks, seals, meds to acquire class golds for those of use who run an instance hundreds of times to still not have that one item that we need for our build drop.

It seems to me that if they base decisions off of run statistics, then the answer is not to continually tweak drops with patches in order to promote less popular venues, but to add a pseudo-real-time update to the loot table chances.

If an instance is seriously being ignored, it should have a dynamic trigger to drop more loot. Likewise, the flavor-of-the-month raid would start to dynamically get more grindy. If reward dictates effort, then all skraids should be fairly evenly attempted, give or take.

If a less than profitable skraid is still favored, or a very rewarding(loot-wise) instance never becomes popular, then one thing is for sure with this method; it isn't loot drops.

How could Turbine not be happy with the loot system? People are actively posting about how they've farmed instances literally thousands of times to get a single gear piece that boosts their prowess by a fractional percent (if even that given that so many people don't even understand how their stats work). The new loot system is a resounding success for them. They've had you guys running old content over and over and over at the most minimal effort on their part.

I'm happy to say that for my part, I beat as much content as anyone else in the game, and didn't waste my time with Turbine's malignant hamster wheel. Don't support terrible game design (easy spamable content) by running it a billion times.

This is good material. You are tackling a difficult beast and I commend you for it. I largely like your ideas, though I haven't spent a lot of time being critical with your ideas. Making certain gear/loot available only by running multiple instances sounds great. I get sucked into the farm/grind sometimes and forget about other really cool instances until I actually play one off chance and go, "man, I forgot how cool this raid/instance was."

There is a lot of Turbine content to be appreciated that gets diminished with the big mmo f-word: farm

Yes, I would really like some kind of system where I knew at a certain point I would eventually get my reward. On my hunter, I have 300+ boss kills in Sambrog without a gold drop. Now, the number I suppose doesn't bother me as much as the fact that I don't know if it'll be another 300 or the next drop. I don't know if it's even worth my time to keep trying or not. If there was a set number, even if that number was ridiculous, say 450 runs, I would at least know that eventually I WILL get a gold and I can decide if I have enough time in real life to spend on that.

Go ahead and keep the RNG and while 450 will get it for sure, maybe 120 will get you a random drop. That still makes it exciting and you get the fun feeling on the time you're lucky. But for those of us who don't have super luck, there needs to be a set number of times run for reward. Mine and another kin have an alliance for static raids, server events, etc with our own custom chat channel. During RoI even towards the end when interest was dropping, we never saw more than a 10% - 20% drop of people online in our chat channel (maybe 20 - 30 people on a busy weekend) but from RoR and on with the new loot system, I log in and there's 2 on a busy weekend. My kin has seen players quitting out of frustration and the feeling that there's no point anymore, and our alliance kin has seen their numbers drop. I'm sure, based on the GLFF numbers, this is a server wide happenstance.